resumed his voyage, bestowing on the place thus discovered the name of Bulfinch's Harbor, in honor of one of the owners of his ship. This is now known as Gray's Harbor.

At daybreak on the 11th, after leaving Bulfinch's Harbor, Gray observed the entrance of his desired port, bearing east-south-east, distant six leagues; and running into it with all sails set, between the breakers, he anchored at one o'clock in a large river of fresh water, ten miles above its mouth. At this spot he remained three days, engaged in trading with the natives, and filling his casks with water; and then sailed up the river about twelve miles along its northern shore, where, finding that he could proceed no farther from having taken the wrong channel, he again came to anchor. On the 20th, he recrossed the bar at the mouth of the river, and regained the Pacific.

On leaving the river, Gray gave it the name of his ship, the Columbia, which it still bears. He called the southern point of land, at the entrance, Cape Adams; and the northern, Cape Hancock. The former of these names retains its place in the maps, the latter does not; the promontory being known as Cape Disappointment,—a name it received from Lieut. Meares, an English navigator, who, like Capt. Gray, judged from appearances that there was the outlet of a river at that point, but failed to find it, and recorded his failure in the name he assigned to the conspicuous headland which marked the place of his fruitless search.

From the mouth of Columbia River, Gray sailed to Nootka Sound, where he communicated his recent discoveries to the Spanish commandant, Quadra; to whom he also gave charts and descriptions of Bulfinch's Harbor, and of the mouth of the Columbia. He departed for Canton in September, and thence sailed to the United States.

The voyages of Kendrick and Gray were not profitable to the adventurers, yet not fruitless of benefit to their country. They opened the way to subsequent enterprises in the same region, which were eminently successful. And, in another point of view, these expeditions were fraught with consequences of the utmost importance. Gray's discovery of Columbia River was the point most relied upon by our negotiators in a subsequent era for establishing the claim of the United States to the part of the continent through which that river flows; and it is in a great measure owing to that discovery that the growing State of Oregon is now a part of the American Republic.

From the date of the discovery of Columbia River to the war of 1812, the direct trade between the American coast and China was almost entirely in the hands of the citizens of the United States. The British merchants were restrained from pursuing it by the opposition of their East-India Company; the Russians were not admitted into Chinese ports; and few ships of any other nation were seen in that part of the ocean. The trade was prosecuted by men whose names are still distinguished among us as those of the master-spirits of American commerce,—the Thorndikes, the Perkinses, Lambs, Sturgis, Cushing, and others of Boston, Astor and others of New York. The greater number of the vessels sent from the United States were fine ships or brigs laden with valuable cargoes of West-India productions, British manufactured articles, and French, Italian, and Spanish wines and spirits; and the owners were men of large capital and high reputation in the commercial world, some of whom were able to compete with the British companies, and even to control their movements.

During all this period, though constant accessions were made to the knowledge of the coast by means of commercial adventure, the interior of the continent, from the Mississippi to the ocean, remained unknown. The intercourse of the people of the United States with the native tribes was restricted by several causes. One was the possession of Louisiana by the Spaniards; another, the retention by the British of several important posts south of the Great Lakes, within the acknowledged territory of the Union. At length, by the treaty of 1794 between Great Britain and the United States, those posts were given up to the Americans; and by treaty with France, in 1803, Louisiana, which had come into possession of that power in 1800, was ceded to the United States. From this period, the Government and people of the United States ceased to be indifferent to the immense and important region whose destinies were committed to them; and the ensuing narrative will relate the first attempt made by national authority to occupy and explore the country.

CHAPTER II.

LEWIS AND CLARKE.

In the year 1786, John Ledyard of Connecticut, who had been with Capt. Cook in his voyage of discovery to the north-west coast of America in 1776-1780, was in Paris, endeavoring to engage a mercantile company in the fur-trade of that coast. He had seen, as he thought, unequalled opportunities for lucrative traffic in the exchange of the furs of that country for the silks and teas of China. But his representations were listened to with incredulity by the cautious merchants of Europe, and he found it impossible to interest any so far as to induce them to fit out an expedition for the object proposed.

Disappointed and needy, he applied for advice and assistance to Mr. Jefferson, at that time the American minister at the court of France. Ledyard had no views of pecuniary gain in the contemplated enterprise: he sought only an opportunity of indulging his love of adventure by exploring regions at that time unknown. Mr. Jefferson, as the guardian of his country's interests and the friend of science, was warmly interested in any scheme which contemplated the opening of the vast interior regions of the American continent to the occupancy of civilized man. Since it was impossible to engage mercantile adventurers to fit out an expedition by sea, Mr. Jefferson proposed to Ledyard that he should go as a traveller, by land, through the Russian territories, as far as the eastern coast of the continent of Asia, and from thence get such conveyance as he could to the neighboring coast of America, and thus reach the spot